Kevin Smith: ‘Clerks 3′ Script Finished But ‘Tusk’ is His Next Movie

Published 1 year ago
by
Anthony Vieira
, Updated October 13th, 2013 at 6:46 am,

In the fanboy sphere of existence, there exists a whole slew of wildly divisive creative figures and subject matter – yet few are quite as bizarre as Clerks filmmaker Kevin Smith – who’s been threatening to retire ever since the DIY, one-theater-at-a-time release of 2010′s horror film (and anti-Westboro Church diatribe) Red State.

Smith keeps changing the story on what exactly his final project is going to be. His long-planned hockey movie Hit Somebody was to be his final cinematic bow – but then it was to become a mini-series. After that, he announced that Clerks 3 - a third entry in the franchise that started his career and influenced a generation of slackers – would be his final film, a fitting end to an uneven career. But at the 2013 New York Comic-Con we learned that Clerks 3 won’t be Smith’s last movie – or even his next movie. Instead, his next project will be something even weirder.

Smith announced during NYCC that the script for Clerks 3 is actually finished, and it will be massive, with “a cast of thousands.” Not only that, but all the guys featured in Smith’s AMC reality series Comic Book Menwill appear somehow, for some reason. You can watch Smith talking quite passionately about Clerks 3in the video below, which is from this past summer’s San Diego Comic-Con. He also provides the details on what is apparently going to be his next film, “based” on a true story about a man looking for odd companionship, to be called Tusk.

Tusk began life as a story Smith recalls stumbling upon out of the blue. After a man is shipwrecked with only a walrus for a companion, he tries to hire someone to dress up in a walrus suit for two hours a day to recapture that friendship. Smith describes it as “a cuddly version of The Human Centipede,” which may or may not excite fans – Smith’s own, or any others.

Smith is into it, though, and says on his blog:

“The listing got my creative juices flowing, and I began reconstructing the whole thing as an old British Hammer horror film, in which a mad scientist intends to sew some hapless lodger into counterfeit blubber, creating a chimera in an effort to answer the ultimate riddle, “Is man, indeed, a walrus at heart?!”

Smith’s podcast followers answered his call on Twitter: should he make it or not? The #WalrusYes responses vastly outnumbered #WalrusNo, which was probably to be expected. It appears that filming will begin in November in North Carolina, and Smith hopes to have the film ready for the Sundance Film Festival in January 2014.

According to a recent THR column by Smith, he found financing for the film via a financial banner called Demarest, and it looks like this thing is happening, with Smith’s Red State star Michael Parks as the man who made a life-like walrus costume because he’s super-lonely, with Justin Long – who appeared in Smith’s Seth Rogen vehicle Zack and Miri Make a Porno co-starring as the poor soul who acts like a walrus in exchange for free room and board. The role was originally offered to Quentin Tarantino, who turned it down.

But what about that original walrus ad? It was actually a hoax, perpetrated by a British man named Chris Parkinson, who (naturally) is now aboard Tusk as an associate producer. According to an interview with The Brighton Source some months ago, Parkinson never meant to mislead anyone, but as for his intention:

“…it’s just making the world a bit more of an interesting and beautiful place. Thanks to the internet it’s quite easy – before you know it you have a new character on your hands.”

So what does all this say about Kevin Smith? He has admitted, several times and without shame, to being “a media whore,” and considers all publicity to be good publicity. And if he’s not really doing anything worth publicity? He’ll generate some, out of thin air if he has to. Smith has alienated most of his early backers in Hollywood, and while he still counts people like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon as his friends (and gave them key early roles in their careers), the days of the moviegoing public eagerly awaiting his next film are long past.

So Tusk may be really good in his eyes, but we’ll see. It’s likely to be so bizarre that even if it approaches the interesting realm of Red State (which was not a hit by any measure, but still better than Clerks 2), it’ll be written off as a stunt and an oddity, squelching whatever excitement his casual fans might have had for Clerks 3.

_____

Tuskis set to begin filming in November, 2013. Clerks 3remains in development.

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Dazz 1 year ago

Tusk sounds ok but not sure if the end result will be as weirdly cool as the pitch seems to be.

I guess I’m a sort of a downer on Smith because other than Dogma, I haven’t really enjoyed any of his other movies (in my opinion, they either fall into immature toilet humour or boring monologues about the state of the world).

He just seems like one of those guys (along with Joss Whedon) who would be cool to hang out with and talk about geeky things with but somehow managed to luck their way through life with crap work that somehow got popular and made them money (like the makers of that annoying Crazy Frog a decade ago).

Well Dazz, as always that’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it. However you slice it, comparing these two produces of many entertainments to the crazy frog tune is taking the mickey however. Whatever you feel about the quality of Smith’s work (and he’d be the first to agree with you), he didn’t didn’t luck into anything.

I’ve noticed that Screen Rant reporting as of late has been extremely lackluster with bad writing.
I like Screen Rant’s format as everything is easy to see and access (unlike “Ain’t it Cool News”) but man, I have only witnessed bad writing, opinionated pieces and uninformative reports that basically say no one is sure about anything.
Please get rid of this staff and hire new people! We are here for news, not Op-eds and rumors based on rumors!

Well, I love this site and love the podcast. The way I see it, and I might be wrong, Screenrant underground is where I get my staff editorial. Unless it’s a review or clearly says it’s an editorial piece I prefer the writers opinions be kept to themselves.
Fans of Smith and followers of his career are the people most likely to read this news, and I’d prefer to not feel insulted on a Sunday morning for being psyched about his next project.

And Anthony, Clerks 2 was excellent in MY opinion and pretty well received in general. Who are you speaking for?

WTF? What is with the passive aggressive jabs here? Just because this writer doesn’t like Smith’s work, doesn’t mean he has to insult Smith. ” Smith has alienated most of his early backers in Hollywood…” How do you know who he’s alienated and who has alienated him? Little bit hackish job here with too much heresay and opinion. Stick to the facts, jack…ass.

I don’t know…I am a huge Kevin Smith fan (own all of his movies), but I just feel like his movies are suffering. His last good movie was Zack and Miri. Cop Out was pretty bad, and Red State was just…weird, I dunno. And so I actually got really excited when I heard about Clerks 3. I wanted him to go out on a high note. I would need to actually see some footage of Tusk, but the sound of it doesn’t really appeal to me.

I want to point out that the part played by Justin Long wasn’t offered to Tarantino. Tarantino was offered a seperate part, of a police officer/authority figure. I forget the name of the character but Smith mentions it in the video.

Rabbit 93 is correct. Tarantino was offered the role of the detective.

“A few of the lazier websites regurgitated misinformation they read on other blogs, writing that I had offered Quentin the role of the human-walrus. This was incorrect: I wanted Quentin to play the detective and speak like Les Habitants!” – Kevin Smith, 10/09/2013

Well, I, for one, follow the Hollywood Babble-On podcast and would rather see a Clerks 3 than Tusk. Not because I love sequels so much but because the concept for Tusk sounds lame to me. So, if I was on Twitter I would have voted No.

Having said that, the last Kevin Smith movies that I saw were Clerks 2 and Cop-Out. I loved the former but the latter was absolutely terrible. I didn’t see any of his movies after that, but from what I heard his filmmaking didn’t improve after Cop-Out…

Why is it lame to essentially focus group your own audience? Sometimes, an idea is too much in your head and you need an outside opinion to know it’s worthwhile. He knew the idea was weird and didn’t want to waste time and money on a failure. He had an idea for a product and asked his customers if it was something they’d be interested in.

I believe he should have courage in his conviction. Maybe saying it was lame was harsh but I think if he has a vision of movie, however weird an obscure, if he truly believes in project he should make it. If it doesn’t work fine at least he gave it a go.

Yeah, fool – that’s the POINT! He isn’t ‘out there’ to impress the people that aren’t interested in him. He knows what his fans like, and he’ll always give them what they want. SORRY if he doesn’t have an many fans as the Beibs – but he’s definitely a better person to follow because he actually loves his fans

Legitimately I am not surprised by the tone of this article as people above have indicated, it’s true Screen rant is rather biased in it’s writing (Look longtime reader and enjoy the site but it’s definitely true), I am also in no way surprised by the fact that they seem to dislike Smith, personally I like the guy and his work but as the point of this post is, “To each their own” I just wish this site tried less to be “Autuer” reviewers that only have a “taste” for the best of cinema and leave their opinions out of the reporting. But oh well, they’ll continue to be what they are, and I’ll continue to be what I am. All I’m saying it Positivity goes a long way…. unless we’re talking about Battleship, dear lord… haha

I heard Smith and Mosier discussing this ad on their podcast and they kept building on it and came up with a hilarious story. It was great audio. I’m not sure if they have enough for a movie or if the addition of visuals will take away from what I was imaginating with his original description. But I loved Red State and wanted to see Smith tackle another horror-type film.

Clerks 2 was genius compared to the mess that was ‘Red State.’ I tired watching it on Netflix one night, painfully all the way through. I enjoy Smith’s smodcast ‘Fatman on Batman,” but his movies are becoming ‘Unwatchable.’ these days.

It’s such a shame that there are so many people out there that just LOVE to berate, belittle, and disrespect someone’s art. I think Picasso’s work looks ridiculous, and would never hang it on my wall – but I wouldn’t go around trying to talk people out of liking Picasso.
I feel very lucky to be one of the people in this world that ‘gets’ Kevin Smith. He’s been such a blessing and a wonderful friend to all his followers. I’ll pay TOP DOLLAR for any movie he releases because of all that he has done for me. He’s never met me before, but he knows me VERY well, and that’s amazing! So all you criticizers can spend your life NOT enjoying things because you are too busy expecting perfection.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and this article is with out a doubt just that. I respect Kevin’s art just because he is original. When Kevin gets an idea he goes with it he puts it down. I believe Red State was a fantastic movie because watching it you would of never guessed how it was gonna end up beginning to end and that kind of thing makes Kevin a one of a kind. Tusk is gonna be a weird movie to where no matter how you slice it i don’t think any of us are going to be able to predict the out come of it. We all have our own opinions and this is mine

the title to this piece should be ‘kevin smith & how i feel about him.’ that would have least been accurate. you are a hack, anthony viera. your article is bad & you should feel bad. this is why no one takes internet ‘journalism’ seriously. save this b******* for your diary.

the title to this piece should be ‘kevin smith & how i feel about him.’ that would have least been accurate. you are a hack, anthony viera. your article is bad & you should feel bad. this is why no one takes internet ‘journalism’ seriously. save this mess for your diary.